Kitabı oku: «The Life of John Marshall (Volume 2 of 4)», sayfa 13
Far as Talleyrand's agents had gone in trying to force the envoys to offer a bribe of a quarter of a million dollars, to the Foreign Minister and Directory, they now went still further. The door of the chamber of horrors was now opened wide to the stubborn Americans. Personal violence was intimated; war was threatened. But Marshall and Pinckney refused to be frightened.
The Directory, Talleyrand, and their emissaries, however, had not employed their strongest resource. "Perhaps you believe," said Bellamy to the envoys, "that in returning and exposing to your countrymen the unreasonableness of the demands of this government, you will unite them in their resistance to those demands. You are mistaken; you ought to know that the diplomatic skill of France and the means she possesses in your country are sufficient to enable her, with the French party in America,637 to throw the blame which will attend the rupture of the negotiations on the federalists, as you term yourselves, but on the British party as France terms you. And you may assure yourselves that this will be done."638
Thus it was out at last. This was the hidden card that Talleyrand had been keeping back. And it was a trump. Talleyrand managed to have it played again by a fairer hand before the game was over. Yes, surely; here was something to give the obstinate Marshall pause. For the envoys knew it to be true. There was a French party in America, and there could be little doubt that it was constantly growing stronger.639 Genêt's reception had made that plain. The outbursts throughout America of enthusiasm for France had shown it. The popular passion exhibited, when the Jay Treaty was made public, had proved it. Adams's narrow escape from defeat had demonstrated the strength of French sympathy in America.
A far more dangerous circumstance, as well known to Talleyrand as it was to the envoys, made the matter still more serious – the democratic societies, which, as we have seen, had been organized in great numbers throughout the United States had pushed the French propaganda with zeal, system, and ability; and were, to America, what the Jacobin Clubs had been to France before their bloody excesses. They had already incited armed resistance to the Government of the United States.640 Thorough information of the state of things in the young country across the ocean had emboldened Barras, upon taking leave of Monroe, to make a direct appeal to the American people in disregard of their own Government, and, indeed, almost openly against it. The threat, by Talleyrand's agents, of the force which France could exert in America, was thoroughly understood by the envoys. For, as we have seen, there was a French party in America – "a party," as Washington declared, "determined to advocate French measures under all circumstances."641 It was common knowledge among all the representatives of the American Government in Europe that the French Directory depended upon the Republican Party in this country. "They reckon … upon many friends and partisans among us," wrote the American Minister in London to the American Minister at The Hague.642
The Directory even had its particular agents in the United States to inflame the American people against their own Government if it did not yield to French demands. Weeks before the President, in 1797, had called Congress in special session on French affairs, "the active and incessant manœuvres of French agents in" America made William Smith think that any favorable action of France "will drive the great mass of knaves & fools back into her [France's] arms," notwithstanding her piracies upon our ships.643
On November 1 the envoys again decided to "hold no more indirect intercourse with" Talleyrand or the Directory. Marshall and Pinckney told Hottenguer that they thought it "degrading our country to carry on further such an indirect intercourse"; and that they "would receive no propositions" except from persons having "acknowledged authority." After much parrying, Hottenguer again unparked the batteries of the French party in America.
He told Marshall and Pinckney that "intelligence had been received from the United States, that if Colonel Burr and Mr. Madison had constituted the Mission, the difference between the two nations would have been accommodated before this time." Talleyrand was even preparing to send a memorial to America, threatened Hottenguer, complaining that the envoys were "unfriendly to an accommodation with France."
The insulted envoys hotly answered that Talleyrand's "correspondents in America took a good deal on themselves when they undertook to say how the Directory would have received Colonel Burr and Mr. Madison"; and they defied Talleyrand to send a memorial to the United States.644
Disgusted with these indirect and furtive methods, Marshall insisted on writing Talleyrand on the subject that the envoys had been sent to France to settle. "I had been for some time extremely solicitous" that such a letter should be sent, says Marshall. "It appears to me that for three envoys extraordinary to be kept in Paris thirty days without being received can only be designed to degrade & humiliate their country & to postpone a consideration of its just & reasonable complaints till future events in which it ought not to be implicated shall have determined France in her conduct towards it. Mr. Gerry had been of a contrary opinion & we had yielded to him but this evening he consented that the letter should be prepared."645
Nevertheless Gerry again objected.646 At last the Paris newspapers took a hand. "It was now in the power of the Administration [Directory]," says Marshall, "to circulate by means of an enslaved press precisely those opinions which are agreeable to itself & no printer dares to publish an examination of them."
"With this tremendous engine at its will, it [the Directory] almost absolutely controls public opinion on every subject which does not immediately affect the interior of the nation. With respect to its designs against America it experiences not so much difficulty as … would have been experienced had not our own countrymen labored to persuade them that our Government was under a British influence."647
On November 3, Marshall writes Charles Lee: "When I clos'd my last letter I did not expect to address you again from this place. I calculated on being by this time on my return to the United States… My own opinion is that France wishes to retain America in her present situation until her negotiation with Britain, which it is believed is about to recommence, shall have been terminated, and a present absolute rupture with America might encourage England to continue the war and peace with England … will put us more in her [France's] power… Our situation is more intricate and difficult than you can believe… The demand for money has been again repeated. The last address to us … concluded … that the French party in America would throw all the blame of a rupture on the federalists… We were warned of the fate of Venice. All these conversations are preparing for a public letter but the delay and the necessity of writing only in cypher prevents our sending it by this occasion… I wish you could … address the Minister concerning our reception. We despair of doing anything… Mr. Putnam an American citizen has been arrested and sent to jail under the pretext of his cheating frenchmen… This … is a mere pretext. It is considered as ominous toward Americans generally. He like most of them is a creditor of the [French] government."648
Finally the envoys sent Talleyrand the formal request, written by Marshall,649 that the Directory receive them. Talleyrand ignored it. Ten more days went by. When might they expect an answer? inquired the envoys. Talleyrand parried and delayed. "We are not yet received," wrote the envoys to Secretary of State Pickering, "and the condemnation of our vessels … is unremittingly continued. Frequent and urgent attempts have been made to inveigle us again into negotiations with persons not officially authorized, of which the obtaining of money is the basis; but we have persisted in declining to have any further communication relative to diplomatic business with persons of that description."650
Anxious as Marshall was about the business of his mission, which now rapidly was becoming an intellectual duel between Talleyrand and himself, he was far more concerned as to the health of his wife, from whom he had heard nothing since leaving America. Marshall writes her a letter full of apprehension, but lightens it with a vague account of the amusements, distractions, and dissipations of the French Capital.
"I have not, since my departure from the United States," Marshall tells his wife, "received a single letter from you or from any one of my friends in America. Judge what anxiety I must feel concerning you. I do not permit myself for a moment to suspect that you are in any degree to blame for this. I am sure you have written often to me but unhappily for me your letters have not found me. I fear they will not. They have been thrown over board or intercepted. Such is the fate of the greater number of the letters addressed by Americans to their friends in France, such I fear will be the fate of all that may be address'd to me.
"In my last letter I informed you that I counted on being at home in March. I then expected to have been able to leave this country by christmas at furthest & such is my impatience to see you & my dear children that I had determined to risk a winter passage." He asks his wife to request Mr. Wickham to see that one of Marshall's law cases "may ly till my return. I think nothing will prevent my being at the chancery term in May.
"Oh God," cries Marshall, "how much time & how much happiness have I thrown away! Paris presents one incessant round of amusement & dissipation but very little I believe even for its inhabitants of that society which interests the heart. Every day you may see something new magnificent & beautiful, every night you may see a spectacle which astonishes & enchants the imagination. The most lively fancy aided by the strongest description cannot equal the reality of the opera. All that you can conceive & a great deal more than you can conceive in the line of amusement is to be found in this gay metropolis but I suspect it would not be easy to find a friend.
"I would not live in Paris," Marshall tells his "dearest Polly" "[if I could] … be among the wealthiest of its citizens. I have changed my lodging much for the better. I liv'd till within a few days in a house where I kept my own apartments perfectly in the style of a miserable old bachelor without any mixture of female society. I now have rooms in the house of a very accomplished a very sensible & I believe a very amiable Lady whose temper, very contrary to the general character of her country women, is domestic & who generally sits with us two or three hours in the afternoon.
"This renders my situation less unpleasant than it has been but nothing can make it eligible. Let me see you once more & I … can venture to assert that no consideration would induce me ever again to consent to place the Atlantic between us. Adieu my dearest Polly. Preserve your health & be happy as possible till the return of him who is ever yours."651
The American Minister in London was following anxiously the fortunes of our envoys in Paris, and gave them frequent information and sound advice. Upon learning of their experiences, King writes that "I will not allow myself yet to despair of your success, though my apprehensions are greater than my hopes." King enclosed his Dispatch number 52 to the American Secretary of State, which tells of the Portuguese Treaty and the decline of Spain's power in Paris.652
In reply, Pinckney writes King, on December 14, that the Directory "are undoubtedly hostile to our Government, and are determined, if possible, to effectuate a change in our administration, and to oblige our present President [Adams] to resign," and further adds that the French authorities contemplate expelling from France "every American who could not prove" that he was for France and against America.
"Attempts," he continues, "are made to divide the Envoys and with that view some civilities are shown to Mr. G.[erry] and none to the two others [Marshall and Pinckney]… The American Jacobins here pay him [Gerry] great Court."653 The little New Englander already was yielding to the seductions of Talleyrand, and was also responsive to the flattery of a group of unpatriotic Americans in Paris who were buttering their own bread by playing into the hands of the Directory and the French Foreign Office.
Marshall now beheld a stage of what he believed was the natural development of unregulated democracy. Dramatic events convinced him that he was witnessing the growth of license into absolutism. Early in December Bonaparte arrived in Paris. Swiftly the Conqueror had come from Rastadt, traveling through France incognito, after one of his lightning-flash speeches to his soldiers reminding them of "the Kings whom you have vanquished, the people upon whom you have conferred liberty." The young general's name was on every tongue.
Paris was on fire to see and worship the hero. But Bonaparte kept aloof from the populace. He made himself the child of mystery. The future Emperor of the French, clad in the garments of a plain citizen, slipped unnoticed through the crowds. He would meet nobody but scholars and savants of world renown. These he courted; but he took care that this fact was known to the people. In this course he continued until the stage was set and the cue for his entrance given.
Finally the people's yearning to behold and pay homage to their soldier-statesman becomes a passion not to be denied. The envious but servile Directory yield, and on December 10, 1797, a splendid festival in Bonaparte's honor is held at the Luxembourg. The scene flames with color: captured battle-flags as decorations; the members of the Directory appareled as Roman Consuls; foreign ministers in their diplomatic costumes; officers in their uniforms; women brilliantly attired in the height of fashion.654 At last the victorious general appears on the arm of Talleyrand, the latter gorgeously clad in the dress of his high office; but Bonaparte, short, slender, and delicate, wearing the plainest clothes of the simplest citizen.
Upon this superb play-acting John Marshall looked with placid wonder. Here, then, thought this Virginian, who had himself fought for liberty on many a battlefield, were the first fruits of French revolutionary republicanism. Marshall beheld no devotion here to equal laws which should shield all men, but only adoration of the sword-wielder who was strong enough to rule all men. In the fragile, eagle-faced little warrior,655 Marshall already saw the man on horseback advancing out of the future; and in the thunders of applause he already heard the sound of marching armies, the roar of shotted guns, the huzzas of charging squadrons.
All this was something that Jefferson had not seen. Jefferson's sojourn in France had been at the time when the French Revolution was just sprouting; and he foresaw only that beautiful idealism into which the glorious dreamers of the time fondly imagined the Revolution would flower.
But Marshall was in Paris after the guillotine had done its work; when corruption sat in the highest places of government; and when military glory in the name of liberty had become the deity of the people. So where Jefferson expected that the roses of peace would bloom, Marshall saw clusters of bayonets, as the fruitage of the French Revolution.
CHAPTER VIII
THE AMERICAN MEMORIAL
Separated far from Europe, we mean not to mingle in her quarrels. (Marshall.)
A fraudulent neutrality is no neutrality at all. (Marshall.)
We have a very considerable party in America who are strongly in our interest. (Madame de Villette.)
Four days after the festival of triumph to Bonaparte, Talleyrand's agents resumed their work. The sordid scenes were repeated, but their monotony was broken. Now the lady of the plot appeared upon the scene. In the long, vexed, and fruitless days of their stay in Paris, the American envoys, it seems, were not without the solace and diversion of the society of the French Capital.
Among the attractive feminine acquaintances they made, one was undoubtedly an agent of the French Foreign Office. Madame de Villette was one of the most engaging women in the French Capital.656 Cultivated, brilliant, and altogether charming, she made herself particularly agreeable to the American envoys. She and Marshall became especially good friends; but Madame de Villette ventured no diplomatic suggestions to him, notwithstanding his easy good nature. She was far too good a judge of character to commit that indiscretion. So was Talleyrand, who by this time had begun to appreciate Marshall's qualities. But Pinckney, hearty, handsome man of the world, but without Marshall's penetration and adroitness, was another matter. Gerry the intriguers could already count upon; and only one other member of the commission was necessary to their ends. Perhaps Pinckney might be won over by this captivating Frenchwoman. On some occasion Madame de Villette approached him: —
"Why will you not lend us money?" said she to Pinckney. "If you were to make us a loan, all matters will be adjusted. When you were contending for your Revolution we lent you money." Pinckney pointed out the differences – that America had requested a loan of France, and France now demanded a loan of America. "Oh, no," said she. "We do not make a demand; we think it more delicate that the offer should come from you; but M. Talleyrand has mentioned to me (who am surely not in his confidence) the necessity of your making us a loan, and I know that he has mentioned it to two or three others; and that you have been informed of it; and I will assure you that, if you remain here six months longer, you will not advance a single step further in your negotiations without a loan."
If that is so, bluntly answered Pinckney, the envoys might as well leave at once. "Why," exclaimed Talleyrand's fair agent, "that might possibly lead to a rupture, which you had better avoid; for we have a very considerable party in America who are strongly in our interest."657
The fox-like Talleyrand had scented another hole by which he might get at his elusive quarry. "Every man has his price" was his doctrine; and his experience hitherto had proved it sound. He found that the brilliant Paris adventurer, Beaumarchais, had a lawsuit against the State of Virginia. Beaumarchais had won this suit in the lower court and it was now pending on appeal. John Marshall was his attorney.658 Here, then, thought Talleyrand, was the way to reach this unknown quantity in his problem.
On December 17, Marshall, happening into Gerry's apartment, found Bellamy there. Beaumarchais had given a dinner to Marshall and his fellow envoys, from which Bellamy had been kept by a toothache. The envoys had returned Beaumarchais's courtesy; and he had retired from this dinner "much indisposed."659 Since then Marshall had not seen his client. Bellamy casually remarked that he had not known, until within a short time, that Marshall was the attorney for Beaumarchais, who, he said, had very high regard for his Virginia attorney.
Marshall, his lawyer's instincts at once aroused, told Bellamy that Beaumarchais's case was of very great magnitude and that he was deeply interested in it. Whereupon, in a low tone, spoken aside for his ear only, Bellamy told Marshall that, in case the latter won the suit, Beaumarchais would "sacrifice £50,000 Sterling of it as the private gratification" demanded by the Directory and Talleyrand, "so that the gratification might be made without any actual loss to the American government." Marshall rejected this offer and informed Pinckney of it.660
Marshall's character is revealed by the entry he promptly made in his Journal. "Having been originally the Counsel of Mr. de Beaumarchais, I had determined & so I informed Genl. Pinckney, that I would not by my voice establish any argument in his favor, but that I would positively oppose any admission of the claim of any French citizen if not accompanied with the admission of claims of the American citizens to property captured and condemned for want of a Rôle d'équipage."661
Bellamy then urged upon Gerry his plan of the Marshall-Beaumarchais arrangement. Talleyrand had been entertaining Gerry privately, and the flattered New Englander again wished to call on the French Minister, "to return the civility" by inviting Talleyrand to dinner.662 To Talleyrand, then, went Gerry in company with Bellamy and asked the Foreign Minister to dine with him. Then Gerry tediously reviewed the situation, concluding in a manner that must have amused the bored Talleyrand: He would rather see the envoys depart for some city in another nation, said Gerry, until the Directory would receive them, than to stay in Paris under the circumstances.
Gerry was sure that the French diplomat was alarmed by this stern threat. "M. Talleyrand appeared to be uneasy at this declaration," he told his colleagues. Still, Talleyrand avoided "saying a word on it"; but he did say that Bellamy's representations "might always be relied on." Talleyrand declared that he would go further; he would himself write out his propositions. This he proceeded to do, held the writing before Gerry's eyes and then burned it; after this performance Talleyrand said he would dine with Gerry "the decade [ten days] after the present."663
Meanwhile, however, Gerry dined with the Foreign Minister. It was not a merry function. Aside from his guest of honor, the French Minister also had at his board Hottenguer, Bellamy, and Hauteval. Gerry could not speak French and Hauteval acted as translator. It must have been a pallid feast; the brilliant, witty, accomplished Talleyrand, man of the world, bon vivant, and lover of gayety; the solemn, dull, and rigid Gerry; the three trained French agents, one of them, as interpreter, the only means of general communication.664 On rising from the table, Hottenguer at once brought up the question of the bribe. Would the envoys now give it? Had they the money ready? Gerry answered no!665
Talleyrand, by now the mouthpiece of the rising Bonaparte, had proposed terms of peace to Great Britain; "the price was a Bribe of a Million Sterling to be divided among Directors, Ministers, and others. Talleyrand's Department was to share one hundred thousand Pounds Sterling." The British Government declined.666
King in London hastens to inform his American diplomatic associates in Paris of this offer, and cautions the envoys to act in concert. To Pinckney, King writes in cipher his anxiety about Gerry, whose integrity King had hoped would "overcome a miserable vanity and a few little defects of character … which I now fear have been discovered by those who will be assiduous to turn them to mischief."
From the same source Pinckney is warned: "You must not appear to suspect what you may really know; … you must … save him [Gerry] and, in doing so, prevent the Division that would grow out of a Schism in your Commission." Gerry will be all right, thinks King, "unless Pride shall be put in opposition to Duty, or Jealousy shall mislead a mind neither ingenuous nor well organized, but habitually suspicious, and, when assailed by personal vanity, inflexible."667
Pinckney informs King of the situation in Paris on December 27, declaring "that we ought to request our Passports and no longer exhibit to the World the unprecedented Spectacle of three Envoys Extraordinary from a free and independent nation, in vain soliciting to be heard."668
Marshall now insists that the American case be formally stated to the French Government. Gerry at last agrees.669 Marshall, of course, prepares this vastly important state paper. For two weeks he works over the first half of this historic document. "At my request Genl. Pinckney & Mr. Gerry met in my room & I read to them the first part of a letter to the Minister of Exterior Relations which consisted of a justification of the American Government,"670 he relates in his Journal.
Over the last half of the American case, Marshall spends seven days. "The Second part of the letter to the Minister of Exterior Relations, comprehending the claims of the United States upon France, being also prepared, I read it to Genl Pinckney & Mr. Gerry." Both sections of Marshall's letter to Talleyrand were submitted to his colleagues for suggestions.671
It was hard work to get Gerry to examine and sign the memorial. "I had so repeatedly pressed Mr. Gerry," notes Marshall, "on the subject of our letter prepared for the Minister of Exterior Relations & manifested such solicitude for its being so completed as to enable us to send it, that I had obviously offended. Today I have urged that subject and for the last time."672 Two days later Marshall chronicles that "Mr. Gerry finished the examination of our letter to the Minister of Exterior Relations."673 A week later the letter, translated and signed, is delivered to Talleyrand.674
Upon this memorial were based future and successful American negotiations,675 and the statement by Marshall remains to this day one of the ablest state papers ever produced by American diplomacy.
Marshall reminds Talleyrand of the frequent and open expressions of America's regard for France, given "with all the ardor and sincerity of youth." These, he says, were considered in America "as evidencing a mutual friendship, to be as durable as the republics themselves." Unhappily the scene changed, says Marshall, and "America looks around in vain for the ally or the friend." He pictures the contrast in the language and conduct of the French Government with what had passed before, and says that the French charge of American partiality toward Great Britain is unfounded.
Marshall then reviews the international situation and makes it so plain that America could not take part in the European wars, that even Talleyrand was never able to answer the argument. "When that war [began] which has been waged with such unparalleled fury," he writes, "which in its vast vicissitudes of fortune has alternately threatened the very existence of the conflicting parties, but which, in its progress, has surrounded France with splendor, and added still more to her glory than to her territory," America found herself at peace with all the belligerent Powers; she was connected with some of them by treaties of amity and commerce, and with France by a treaty of alliance.
But these treaties, Marshall points out, did not require America to take part in this war. "Being bound by no duty to enter into the war, the Government of the United States conceived itself bound by duties, the most sacred, to abstain from it." Upon the ground that man, even in different degrees of social development, is still the natural friend of man, "the state of peace, though unstipulated by treaty," was the only course America could take. "The laws of nature" enjoined this, Marshall announces; and in some cases "solemn and existing engagements … require a religious observance" of it.676
Such was the moral ground upon which Marshall built his argument, and he strengthened it by practical considerations. "The great nations of Europe," he writes, "either impelled by ambition or by existing or supposed political interests, peculiar to themselves, have consumed more than a third of the present century in wars." The causes that produced this state of things "cannot be supposed to have been entirely extinguished, and humanity can scarcely indulge the hope that the temper or condition of man is so altered as to exempt the next century from the ills of the past. Strong fortifications, powerful navies, immense armies, the accumulated wealth of ages, and a full population, enable the nations of Europe to support those wars."677
Problems of this character, Marshall explains, must be solved by European countries, not by the United States. For, "encircled by no dangerous Powers, they [the Americans] neither fear, nor are jealous of their neighbors," says Marshall, "and are not, on that account, obliged to arm for their own safety." He declares that America, separated from Europe "by a vast and friendly ocean," has "no motive for a voluntary war," but "the most powerful reasons to avoid it."678
America's great and undefended commerce, made necessary by her then economic conditions, would be, Marshall contends, the "immediate and certain victim" of engaging in European wars; and he then demonstrates the disastrous results to America of departing from her policy of Neutrality.
The immense and varied resources of the United States can only be used for self-defense, reasons the Virginia lawyer. "Neither the genius of the nation, nor the state of its own finances admit of calling its citizens from the plough but to defend their own liberty and their own firesides."
He then points out that, in addition to the moral wrong and material disaster of America's taking part in France's wars, such a course means the launching into the almost boundless ocean of European politics. It implies "contracting habits of national conduct and forming close political connections which must have compromitted the future peace of the nation, and have involved it in all the future quarrels of Europe."
Marshall then describes the "long train of armies, debts, and taxes, checking the growth, diminishing happiness, and perhaps endangering the liberty of the United States, which must have followed." And all this for what? Not to fulfill America's treaties; "not to promote her own views, her own objects, her own happiness, her own safety; but to move as a satellite around some other greater planet, whose laws she must of necessity obey."679
"It was believed," he declares, "that France would derive more benefit from the Neutrality of America than from her becoming a party in the war." Neutrality determined upon, he insists that "increased motives of honor and of duty commanded its faithful observance… A fraudulent neutrality is no neutrality at all… A … nation which would be admitted to its privileges, should also perform the duties it enjoins."
Arthur Lee, Beaumarchais's enemy, to whom Congress in 1787 left the adjustment, had declared that the Frenchman owed the United States two million francs. This prejudiced report was the cause of almost a half-century of dispute, and of gross injustice. (See Loménie: Beaumarchais et son temps; also, Channing, iii, 283, and references in the footnote; and Perkins: France in the American Revolution. Also see Henry to Beaumarchais, Jan. 8, 1785; Henry, iii, 264, in which Henry says: "I therefore feel myself gratified in seeing, as I think, ground for hope that yourself, and those worthy and suffering of ours in your nation, who in so friendly a manner advanced their money and goods when we were in want, will be satisfied that nothing has been omitted which lay in our power towards paying them.")
